{"id":3070,"date":"2008-07-01T20:16:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-01T20:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2008\/07\/most-priests-live-lives-of-heroic-integrity.html"},"modified":"2008-07-01T20:16:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-01T20:16:00","slug":"most-priests-live-lives-of-heroic-integrity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/07\/most-priests-live-lives-of-heroic-integrity.html","title":{"rendered":"“Most priests live lives of heroic integrity”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s an intriguing piece<\/a> out of Long Island, where a man is collecting interviews in an effort to repair the damage done to the reputation of priests: <\/p>\n

he sex-abuse scandal that broke in 2002 roiled the Roman Catholic Church and in the eyes of many tarnished the image of priests. But for Farmingdale resident Ed Thompson, as horrible as the scandal was, the larger truth is that the vast majority of priests are heroes.<\/p>\n

“Most priests live lives of heroic integrity … and selfless dedication to others” in a society that worships power, wealth and fame, Thompson said in an interview.<\/p>\n

For the past 11 years, Thompson, a trained archivist, has been conducting in-depth spoken-word histories of some 250 religious workers – priests nuns, and brothers on Long Island and in New York City.<\/p>\n

Subjects range from a nun who founded a literacy program for impoverished immigrant women, to a priest nearly killed in the World Trade Center terrorist attack, to another who served 18 years in a Third World mission.<\/p>\n

Thompson has done the work for the dioceses of Rockville Centre and Brooklyn, the Archdiocese of New York, Columbia University and Molloy College.<\/p>\n

The fate of the transcribed interviews is not clear. Most are sitting in storage, although Molloy plans to use some this fall as part of a traveling program on the contributions of Irish-Americans to the Rockville Centre college and the Dominican sisters who founded it.<\/p>\n

Thompson, 67, a retired Brooklyn Union Gas executive, is an active member of Voice of the Faithful, a group of lay people formed after the sex-abuse scandal and highly critical of many church practices.<\/p>\n

Yet he said he sees no contradiction in adopting a critical stance toward the church while at the same time championing the exemplary work of its members. “We should talk about the rot in the church, but we should also talk about the goodness in the church,” he said. “I’m simply trying to balance it and it needs to be balanced.”<\/p>\n

Even some people critical of the church’s handling of the scandal don’t dispute Thompson’s findings.<\/p>\n

“I’ve met many good priests and nuns. I would never lump them into one,” said Tim Echausse, of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Still, he said, “we can never forget the damage the bad bishops and priests have done so that history never repeats.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s more at the link, describing the work he’s done and the priests his met. We could use someone like him in every diocese, couldn’t we?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s an intriguing piece out of Long Island, where a man is collecting interviews in an effort to repair the damage done to the reputation of priests: he sex-abuse scandal that broke in 2002 roiled the Roman Catholic Church and in the eyes of many tarnished the image of priests. But for Farmingdale resident Ed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-people-in-the-pews","category-vocations"],"yoast_head":"\n"Most priests live lives of heroic integrity" - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/07\/most-priests-live-lives-of-heroic-integrity.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Most priests live lives of heroic integrity" - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here’s an intriguing piece out of Long Island, where a man is collecting interviews in an effort to repair the damage done to the reputation of priests: he sex-abuse scandal that broke in 2002 roiled the Roman Catholic Church and in the eyes of many tarnished the image of priests. But for Farmingdale resident Ed…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/07\/most-priests-live-lives-of-heroic-integrity.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-07-01T20:16:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Deacon Greg Kandra\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"\"Most priests live lives of heroic integrity\" - The Deacon's Bench","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/07\/most-priests-live-lives-of-heroic-integrity.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"\"Most priests live lives of heroic integrity\" - The Deacon's Bench","og_description":"Here’s an intriguing piece out of Long Island, where a man is collecting interviews in an effort to repair the damage done to the reputation of priests: he sex-abuse scandal that broke in 2002 roiled the Roman Catholic Church and in the eyes of many tarnished the image of priests. 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3070\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}